I need to copy the newest file in a directory to a new location. So far I've found resources on the forfiles command, a date-related question here, and another related question. I'm just having a bit of trouble putting the pieces together! How do I copy the newest file in that directory to a new place?
This question is related to
batch-file
forfiles
@Chris Noe
Note that the space in front of the & becomes part of the previous command. That has bitten me with SET, which happily puts trailing blanks into the value.
To get around the trailing-space being added to an environment variable, wrap the set command in parens.
E.g. FOR /F %%I IN ('DIR "*.*" /B /O:D') DO (SET NewestFile=%%I)
This will open a second cmd.exe window. If you want it to go away, replace the /K with /C.
Obviously, replace new_file_loc with whatever your new file location will be.
@echo off
for /F %%i in ('dir /B /O:-D *.txt') do (
call :open "%%i"
exit /B 0
)
:open
start "window title" "cmd /K copy %~1 new_file_loc"
exit /B 0
Bash:
find -type f -printf "%T@ %p \n" \
| sort \
| tail -n 1 \
| sed -r "s/^\S+\s//;s/\s*$//" \
| xargs -iSTR cp STR newestfile
where "newestfile" will become the newestfile
alternatively, you could do newdir/STR or just newdir
Breakdown:
Important
After running this once, the newest file will be whatever you just copied :p ( assuming they're both in the same search scope that is ). So you may have to adjust which filenumber you copy if you want this to work more than once.
The accepted answer gives an example of using the newest file in a command and then exiting. If you need to do this in a bat file with other complex operations you can use the following to store the file name of the newest file in a variable:
FOR /F "delims=|" %%I IN ('DIR "*.*" /B /O:D') DO SET NewestFile=%%I
Now you can reference %NewestFile% throughout the rest of your bat file.
For example here is what we use to get the latest version of a database .bak file from a directory, copy it to a server, and then restore the db:
:Variables
SET DatabaseBackupPath=\\virtualserver1\Database Backups
echo.
echo Restore WebServer Database
FOR /F "delims=|" %%I IN ('DIR "%DatabaseBackupPath%\WebServer\*.bak" /B /O:D') DO SET NewestFile=%%I
copy "%DatabaseBackupPath%\WebServer\%NewestFile%" "D:\"
sqlcmd -U <username> -P <password> -d master -Q ^
"RESTORE DATABASE [ExampleDatabaseName] ^
FROM DISK = N'D:\%NewestFile%' ^
WITH FILE = 1, ^
MOVE N'Example_CS' TO N'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Example.mdf', ^
MOVE N'Example_CS_log' TO N'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Example_1.LDF', ^
NOUNLOAD, STATS = 10"
I know you asked for Windows but thought I'd add this anyway,in Unix/Linux you could do:
cp `ls -t1 | head -1` /somedir/
Which will list all files in the current directory sorted by modification time and then cp the most recent to /somedir/
Bash:
find -type f -printf "%T@ %p \n" \
| sort \
| tail -n 1 \
| sed -r "s/^\S+\s//;s/\s*$//" \
| xargs -iSTR cp STR newestfile
where "newestfile" will become the newestfile
alternatively, you could do newdir/STR or just newdir
Breakdown:
Important
After running this once, the newest file will be whatever you just copied :p ( assuming they're both in the same search scope that is ). So you may have to adjust which filenumber you copy if you want this to work more than once.
This will open a second cmd.exe window. If you want it to go away, replace the /K with /C.
Obviously, replace new_file_loc with whatever your new file location will be.
@echo off
for /F %%i in ('dir /B /O:-D *.txt') do (
call :open "%%i"
exit /B 0
)
:open
start "window title" "cmd /K copy %~1 new_file_loc"
exit /B 0
To allow this to work with filenames using spaces, a modified version of the accepted answer is needed:
FOR /F "delims=" %%I IN ('DIR . /B /O:-D') DO COPY "%%I" <<NewDir>> & GOTO :END
:END
This will open a second cmd.exe window. If you want it to go away, replace the /K with /C.
Obviously, replace new_file_loc with whatever your new file location will be.
@echo off
for /F %%i in ('dir /B /O:-D *.txt') do (
call :open "%%i"
exit /B 0
)
:open
start "window title" "cmd /K copy %~1 new_file_loc"
exit /B 0
The accepted answer gives an example of using the newest file in a command and then exiting. If you need to do this in a bat file with other complex operations you can use the following to store the file name of the newest file in a variable:
FOR /F "delims=|" %%I IN ('DIR "*.*" /B /O:D') DO SET NewestFile=%%I
Now you can reference %NewestFile% throughout the rest of your bat file.
For example here is what we use to get the latest version of a database .bak file from a directory, copy it to a server, and then restore the db:
:Variables
SET DatabaseBackupPath=\\virtualserver1\Database Backups
echo.
echo Restore WebServer Database
FOR /F "delims=|" %%I IN ('DIR "%DatabaseBackupPath%\WebServer\*.bak" /B /O:D') DO SET NewestFile=%%I
copy "%DatabaseBackupPath%\WebServer\%NewestFile%" "D:\"
sqlcmd -U <username> -P <password> -d master -Q ^
"RESTORE DATABASE [ExampleDatabaseName] ^
FROM DISK = N'D:\%NewestFile%' ^
WITH FILE = 1, ^
MOVE N'Example_CS' TO N'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Example.mdf', ^
MOVE N'Example_CS_log' TO N'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Example_1.LDF', ^
NOUNLOAD, STATS = 10"
Bash:
find -type f -printf "%T@ %p \n" \
| sort \
| tail -n 1 \
| sed -r "s/^\S+\s//;s/\s*$//" \
| xargs -iSTR cp STR newestfile
where "newestfile" will become the newestfile
alternatively, you could do newdir/STR or just newdir
Breakdown:
Important
After running this once, the newest file will be whatever you just copied :p ( assuming they're both in the same search scope that is ). So you may have to adjust which filenumber you copy if you want this to work more than once.
This will open a second cmd.exe window. If you want it to go away, replace the /K with /C.
Obviously, replace new_file_loc with whatever your new file location will be.
@echo off
for /F %%i in ('dir /B /O:-D *.txt') do (
call :open "%%i"
exit /B 0
)
:open
start "window title" "cmd /K copy %~1 new_file_loc"
exit /B 0
Bash:
find -type f -printf "%T@ %p \n" \
| sort \
| tail -n 1 \
| sed -r "s/^\S+\s//;s/\s*$//" \
| xargs -iSTR cp STR newestfile
where "newestfile" will become the newestfile
alternatively, you could do newdir/STR or just newdir
Breakdown:
Important
After running this once, the newest file will be whatever you just copied :p ( assuming they're both in the same search scope that is ). So you may have to adjust which filenumber you copy if you want this to work more than once.
@echo off
set source="C:\test case"
set target="C:\Users\Alexander\Desktop\random folder"
FOR /F "delims=" %%I IN ('DIR %source%\*.* /A:-D /O:-D /B') DO COPY %source%\"%%I" %target% & echo %%I & GOTO :END
:END
TIMEOUT 4
My attempt to copy the newest file from a folder
just set your source and target folders and it should work
This one ignores folders, concern itself only with files
Recommed that you choose filetype in the DIR path changing *.* to *.zip for example
TIMEOUT wont work on winXP I think
@Chris Noe
Note that the space in front of the & becomes part of the previous command. That has bitten me with SET, which happily puts trailing blanks into the value.
To get around the trailing-space being added to an environment variable, wrap the set command in parens.
E.g. FOR /F %%I IN ('DIR "*.*" /B /O:D') DO (SET NewestFile=%%I)
To allow this to work with filenames using spaces, a modified version of the accepted answer is needed:
FOR /F "delims=" %%I IN ('DIR . /B /O:-D') DO COPY "%%I" <<NewDir>> & GOTO :END
:END
@echo off
set source="C:\test case"
set target="C:\Users\Alexander\Desktop\random folder"
FOR /F "delims=" %%I IN ('DIR %source%\*.* /A:-D /O:-D /B') DO COPY %source%\"%%I" %target% & echo %%I & GOTO :END
:END
TIMEOUT 4
My attempt to copy the newest file from a folder
just set your source and target folders and it should work
This one ignores folders, concern itself only with files
Recommed that you choose filetype in the DIR path changing *.* to *.zip for example
TIMEOUT wont work on winXP I think
I know you asked for Windows but thought I'd add this anyway,in Unix/Linux you could do:
cp `ls -t1 | head -1` /somedir/
Which will list all files in the current directory sorted by modification time and then cp the most recent to /somedir/
Source: Stackoverflow.com